The present invention relates to television systems including apparatus for programming the television system so that it is automatically tuned to preselected channels at corresponding future times.
A variety of so-called television "programmers" or "schedulers" have recently been proposed for programming a television system such as a television receiver or video tape recorder so that it is automatically tuned to preselected channels at corresponding future times. These systems have necessitated adding control apparatus to the television system for entering and verifying the information related to the future selections. Since many present day television receivers already include a calculator-like keyboard for generating binary signals representing channel numbers of channels to be tuned by a digital tuner portion of the receiver and a receiver characteristic such as volume to be controlled by a signal processing portion of the receiver, it is desirable to minimize the cost and complexity of additional apparatus for a scheduling feature so that the scheduler portion be capable of utilizing the same keyboard, without any additional control devices for entering and verifying scheduling information. Furthermore, in such a scheduler apparatus, in which the same keyboard has a multiplicity of functions, it is desirable to provide prompt features which suggest or remind a viewer of which operational steps to follow in the various operating modes, again desirably without the necessity of additional apparatus. Finally, it is desirable that such scheduler apparatus operate in a manner which tends to reduce the possibility of entry of information which is improper due to operator error.